Sunday, July 09, 2006

PROMISES-A MONOLOGUE WITH MYGRANDSON

Today your mother introduced you to me, and I welcomed you. Our family is now celebrating your existence.

When I received the news about you, I was filled with happiness and delight. I can tell you right now that like your mother; you will be a source of inspiration for me.

If destiny takes my life today, I thank God for having had the pleasure of realizing other dreams:

§ Knowing you exist and that soon we will be sharing good times.

§ To see my self-realization by allowing me to continue my lineage. May the Creator favor you with natural abilities, which run through your veins from your great grandfather and may you contribute with ideas, work, effort and dedication so that they are not lost. May you use them to make something better of this world for new generations to come and for those of us who are about to leave.

§ To see my self-realization as a father, an affirmation that the values and traditions given to your mother by us old men have at times produced bitter sorrows. Our ancestors did not succumb to the temptation of despotic liberal ideas, fear, guilt, the effects of misunderstanding from those who see the splinter in the other eye without seeing the beam in their own eyes. A product of their ignorance in the good sense of the word, not something associated with conventional beliefs critical of those who prejudge. Only unfamiliar with the existence or use of a dictionary or simple inexperience for lack of education or support from older people, a surmountable barrier by simple effort and use of reason.

§ Being irrefutable evidence that everyday living alienated from this society has not consumed our Latin roots, which makes us lose our own identity, disregarding previous disagreements arising from the honest desire to recommend education as the basis for a better future. Your life must be supported by good academic preparation, humility, listening to sound advice, surrounding yourself with steadfast friends that seek your well-being, not attempting to disguise with their advice their own fears and complexes, but rather providing a shoulder and time to listen. You may hear sound advice coming from their mouths, and they will be your buddies in parties, adventures or orgies, but the words that come from your parents are the ones you will have to value.

Your parents gave you life, the fruit of their ideals. They will be your unconditional friends for life. Don't deny them the opportunity to be your confidants for fear of speaking up, expressing your confusion or believing yourself wise when deciphering their actions. Don't assume that they don't know how to listen. Don't reproach them for not having learned to listen because they have little education or had to give up to make a living or were raised in a deficient system. These are fears that I hope you will not face because of the experiences drawn from our own actions. Believe me; we have already paid our dues with interest. Don't allow the family to disintegrate to pursue the adventure of living for the sake of living, as we are here together for you, and though our future is still uncertain, I promise you to improve it with help from your parents.

You are blessed by the opportunity to be born and grow up in a land far away from your roots. You will have a range of opportunities offered by this society. You must not waste them, unless you want to be just another number. I wish I had had your luck and parents with vision at my disposal. May your parents value our sacrifice, the sacrifice of having given up a ready-made life and start from scratch to give them this world of opportunities. The merit is not only ours, the concept of family, values and traditions have contributed to achieving it, a credit that we must acknowledge to the family of your maternal grandmother, humble, unpretentious, but always faithful to the family. Not by incapacity, but rather with vision and human warmth, placing happiness before wealth.

I didn’t have that, because of few opportunities and the conditions that are typical of underdeveloped countries. These are usually attributed to the lack of resources and their own means of production, in addition to other words that spoken very loudly. We do not share this idea, because if we wanted to do so, we would have to start with the truth and accept it. Plans and strategies for being well educated would hinge on the reality of the specific; that is if the collective interest is actually what concerns us. But because of a matter of interest, we adapt; we immerse ourselves in a game of chess and take out our own share. We sway to the melodies that touch us, without taking advantage of so much theory that is extolled in the classrooms of distinguished universities, the source of production of gray matter, which is wasted when the benefit of its installed capacity is not maximized and allowed to migrate.

Other economies will draw advantage from an investment that they didn't make solely because the vision of the future won the match of today's interest. This is similar to the everyday life of our current reality abroad in our communities. Qualified labor as a resource for our community is under utilized, and because of a lack of vision, there is the crude idea that we must pay our dues for the fear of leaving in evidence our ethical, professional and limited incapacity. When we do that, we encourage the opium of ignorance so that the masses are unaware of the reality and take their own reins once the truth is known. They limit resources and information, which they place at our, the misnamed minorities, disposal, with the result for us that it is easier to create worlds of dependence in order not to lose one’s own and impede development and collective well-being. How good it would be for us to show to this country with facts that we are not dependent on public charity programs, the subject of local political campaigns to make the news. If Americans used the statistics that they themselves invented and put their gray matter to work, they would see that Latinos could be part of the solution to the baby-boomer effect. Or at least they would develop a comprehensive plan of action by taking our ability, labor force, determination and desire to succeed, all of which identify us.

Apart from what we represent today at first glance, stigmatized as a problem, they put up barriers to work in freedom. We are utilized to develop a foreign policy strategy with friendly countries that enables them to keep their economies afloat, a product of the nostalgic remittances of their fellow countrymen, without this representing an additional investment by this country, in order to maintain its strategy of dependence. The pay is very expensive if we take into consideration the sacrifice of lives involved in order to support the idea of playing to be superpower. History calls this a necessary evil for the wellbeing of the community.

Thank God that it won't be your turn to live at the time when economic and social development plans were hatched by experts where strategies for return on investment and dependence devised wars for the purpose of selling obsolete military equipment for technological advance, which took up space in warehouses.

How to prevent a population increase from destroying a visionless development plan by leaving the task of leveling the numbers to the war, are some of the stories on my lap that I will tell you, instead of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, to help you recognize the fallacy of man, social injustice and all you can do if you want and don’t think of your own interest first.

There will be time ahead, only experiences remain to be had, the work is hard and will exhaust you, but the price to pay for living for the sake of living and learning at the expense of our own experiences, will be high.

Humans make mistakes and sages correct them. I congratulate your parents, though infants when it comes to life, they have the merit of not succumbing to the fear of assuming responsibilities. A credit in their favor for having been enrolled on the right foot when entering the school of life in order to fulfill as responsible adults our reason for being as human beings, to perpetuate the species, to bring desired children into the world. We are thankful that the idea was not even thought of or that they did not have the misfortune of others, who today are part of the news and statistics. Poor angels that before seeing the light are already suffering or even predestined to the torture of mutilation, death or abandonment because of giving priority to the petty pleasures of their youth, their inexperience and lack of understanding at the cost of their rights, the right to live.

You will carry the bread under your arm like your great grandmother Alicia would say. I am sure that you will give her an insanity of joy, just like when she received news of her first granddaughter.

I give your parents my trust and unconditional support as temporary comfort in for them to face the challenges to come. Thank you for allowing me to be your grandfather.

If God grants me the grace of seeing you be born and grow, today I make you these promises:

Not to abandon your parents so that they can forge a future for you, based on principles and values, giving them a guide they can follow.

I will do quixotic deeds to obtain a better future for you. I will paint rainbows and write mosaics of letters. Paintbrush and letters will be my standard to shout to the four winds that we must build a better future by being socially aware and working together for common causes. By this I hope to leave evidence that the opium of the poor is ignorance and the lack of Brotherhood, which we can overcome if we work together.

Together let’s pray to the Creator that there be no rocks in our path to trip us up and may He allow us to fulfill this promise that is growing just like you.

Let us not succumb to hunger and not sacrifice our goals and ideals just to survive in this egotistical and inhuman world full of violence and superfluous materialistic pleasures that each day makes us less human and desensitized. Let us seek alternatives to make the world better, free of poverty and famine. Let us not sacrifice the ecosystem, which places us at risk of extinction.

Let us not battle with false prophets that rend the shirt for the common good so that unity becomes a flat and trite phrase, which serves to mock us and say behind our backs “Oh there’s another one looking for the American dream.” They have not taken the time to reflect that the success achieved rests on an uncertain base at the cost of the ignorance of others. Applying the constructive critics of Engel and Marx, some day you will learn in your process of education how to identify the capitalist system, “The exploitation of Man by Man,” because in order to survive, you must sell your labor, since you lack or don’t have available your own means of production. You will learn that many wave the flag just to be different or impose their own orthodox criteria.

In our reality, these days the same rule applies, to keep them from knowing the truth so that they make their own options.

You will learn of those that today immerse themselves in the struggle for power, achieving notoriety while in search of their own particular interest, of those that move everything pretending to be godparents. A famous phrase of father Montes, may he rest in peace, who I met when I had the opportunity to benefit from his lectures talking about his doctoral thesis.

Of those romantic and fanatic dreamers who have not yet realized the opportunities available to them, that they can work for the collective good of their new home, merely by not accepting the reality of the fact that their home is abroad, trying to keep alive ideologies and colored flags. They encourage cronyism or groups that make them well known, trying to be included in an unproductive world, since they only achieve fame through photos. They forget to give priority to problems at home, not keeping in mind that they are more productive for those whom they left behind if they capitalize on the opportunities.

Of those who usually form elitist groups based on beliefs, race, creed, color and nationality, whose aptitudes only work to the detriment of the minorities, of which we are the majority, and who do not put an end to the barriers of discrimination, hate and racism.

We have to give the benefit of the doubt in order to continue believing that one day we can be better human beings and do good without asking for anything in return, only by simple conviction and satisfaction, without [placing] special interests above the most helpless and the poorest of the poor. Hoping that God will enlighten and sensitize them, in order to work together for a common cause. Until now a utopia, and my first advice [is] “Dream” and “dream big,” which are the engines that drive us to overcome, and I will help you to set goals to follow that with determination, dedication, sacrifice and all humility you will be able to achieve on your own, without having to [give up] your dignity, taking advantage of their need or at the cost of sacrificing others.

Right now consider yourself lucky. You will have the opportunity to meet four generations of your roots: parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandmother.

With this monologue that you have been good enough to listen to, I have found a part of me that I was looking for.

My name is Jorge, your grandfather, a humble, bohemian and crazy dreamer, which is how I want to be remembered.

And to those who read this writing, let me say that it is just a means of expressing the joy I feel at being a grandfather. I don't want them to distort my words, pretending to be psychoanalysts, trying to find coarse resentments of machismo. Let me clarify that I am only making use of my right to freedom of expression, which many out of ignorance don’t know that they have at their disposal here.

If our critics are severe with our thinking and brand us as traitors of our own land, socially resentful, filled with complexes, contemptuous or by ignorance, one more product of the repression from which we come, idealists, etc., you tell them, you may call my grandfather a dreamer, but he has always lived his freedom.

We will recommend to them that their criticism may be more productive for those who use this right to peddle unfounded ideologies, when they do not place the well-being of humanity before their own interests and deceive those who are ignorant.